Rap`s Bad Rap

`Fear Of A Black Planet` Touches Universal Concerns

On their third album, Public Enemy affirms that it is not just a great rap group, but one of the best rock bands on the planet-black or otherwise.

Like most P.E. projects, the album title is designed to provoke a response, and those who don`t bother to listen closely will undoubtedly accuse the group of resorting to divisive, black nationalist rhetoric.

Those kinds of quick judgments are exactly what ``Fear of a Black Planet`` harpoons: ``Man, you ain`t gotta/Worry `bout a thing,`` begins Chuck D, addressing his white audience. It`s fear that divides us, he says;

understand me better and you won`t run.

``Fear of a Black Planet`` is about achieving that understanding, but on Public Enemy`s terms. In presenting their view of life from an Afro-centric, as opposed to Euro-centric, perspective, P.E. challenges listeners to step into their world.

It`s a world full of questions rather than easy answers: Why does the movie industry keep black actors in subservient roles (``Burn Hollywood Burn``)? Why do blacks influence pop music so much, yet profit so little from it (``Who Stole the Soul?``)? Where`s an ambulance when you need one (``911 is a Joke``)? What`s so wrong about interracial relationships

(``Pollywanacraka``)?

Chuck D`s deep voice mirrors the gravity of his concerns. When he belts out a line like ``Never question what I am, God knows!/Cause it`s comin` from the heart,`` he echoes the urgency of the Sex Pistols` Johnny Rotten 14 years ago when he snarled, ``We mean it, man!``

And like the Pistols, Public Enemy`s music-as funky and danceable as much of it is-is more of an assault than an entertainment.

Producers Hank and Keith Schocklee, Carly Ryder and Eric Sadler pack

``Fear`` with dense, vertigo-inducing arrangements, interspersed with snippets of dialogue and radio broadcasts that chronicle P.E.`s controversy-riddled past.

Chuck D can take the heat, as he declares in ``B Side Wins Again``:

``Whatever it takes to make it hardcore/We gonna roll it raw/That`s what you buy it for.``

But in Public Enemy`s ``black planet,`` ``hardcore`` takes on many connotations, encompassing compassion as well as defiance. In ``Revolutionary Generation,`` Chuck D makes a plea for equality that invokes Aretha Franklin`s classic soul song of the `60s: ``Forget about me/Just set my sister free/r-e- s-p-e-c-t my sisters, not my enemy/cause we`ll be stronger together.``